


You are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins

by raelouise



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raelouise/pseuds/raelouise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn’s just a boy from Bradford!AU. On Zayn’s twentieth birthday, Danny’s gift to him, tucked unassumingly inside of his birthday card, is a plane ticket to New York City.  </p>
<p> <i>His Zayn has been looking new in New York; his dark clothes fit differently and something about the American light casts his cheeks in sharper relief. He looks like the sort of boy who ought to prefer his Drake on vinyl and his literature classic- and he is, only Bradford cloaks that in the last of childhood predictability.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	You are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Written for a challenge at _One Direction Elite_.  
>  2\. I’ve never been to New York, bare that in mind.  
>  3\. This is horrendously self-indulgent and I fear, ultimately pointless, but I just wanted to spend some quality time with these boys. I’m not even sure there’s a worthwhile plot in here, oh god.

The rain clouds first burst whilst they’re eating in a gourmet pizzeria; the sort of restaurant hipster bloggers excel the virtues of.  

Sat at a table beside a window, they watch the hundred-bullet rush of it over the pane as they tear uneven slices from the same pepper heavy deep pan and hum. The rain in New York is different, they think, to Bradford’s Northern drizzle. It’s all sheets of glass that crash and shatter. Loud. Quick as the city it’s self and many hued- daubed yellow from the speeding taxi cabs, grey-blue up from the puddled sidewalks, blood red with the bokeh of stop lights. Fast paced poetry or a slow paced film. The boys suck cheese grease from their fingers and Danny gently knocks his shoulder to Zayn’s- 

“Hey,” He whispers, as though he doesn’t wish to disturb the storm, “Which one do ya think will win?” He taps, _taptap_ , over two budding rain drops that quiver before they begin their descent.  

Zayn grins at him, sweetened by his Pepsi, and takes a second- “Right.”.  

When the left droplet skips an inch ahead and Zayn’s lower lip rolls right out, Danny startles like a deer. Wants to kiss it but doesn’t. His Zayn has been looking new in New York; his dark clothes fit differently and something about the American light casts his cheeks in sharper relief. He looks like the sort of boy who ought to prefer his Drake on vinyl and his literature classic- and he is, only Bradford cloaks that in the last of childhood predictability. Seemingly, nobody had thought to tell Yorkshire that the little Malik boy was no longer fourteen, and nobody had thought to inform Danny, either.  

It’s just. He’s always been beautiful, Danny’s not-quite-youngest brother, but never like this. Now he’s done in oil paints, gilt framed for a gallery audience and Danny wants to unhook the canvas from the wall and hide it beneath his bed. 

“You know what bro,” Danny pauses before his next bite of pizza, “Like, when you’re a proper teacher and tha’? You’re gonna be breaking far too many student’s hearts. They’re all gonna be proper angling for detentions.”  

Zayn casts his gaze to his lap, “What? Danny mate, you’re proper weird.” He scoffs, “Anyway- I been thinkin’, yeah, maybe I don’t wanna be a teacher. Maybe I wanna be like, a pirate.”  

The older boy simply arches a knowing eyebrow- “Have you and Ant been mooning over Johnny Depp in them Caribbean movies again?” He asks, hand extending to flick at the charms dangling from the necklace Zayn is wearing. A feather, a crinkle-edged coin, a little locket. “I see it though. See you sailing the seven seas,” He concedes, long thumb beneath the silver filigree, “A magpie of a pirate, who’s a little too thoughtful but fairly handy with his fists thanks to his big brother. And fit you know, to entice the wenches.” 

From the restaurant, they slip out into the downpour for only a moment- ducking quickly into the next doorway along, into a bazaar of vintage clothing stores and windows of oddities. Still, the pair of them manage to get rather damp between the two. Gasping and laughing, they mirror each other in the warmly lit walkway; gulping at oxygen and pushing inky hair from their eyes, sweeping rivulets of rain from their chapped cheeks. The water clings regardless, to lashes and noses and leather jackets, so that they gleam from it.  

A heavy, crystal bead slips to Zayn’s jawline and Danny wants to curl his tongue against it. Instead, he punches Zayn’s bicep in that American-movie-type-way he’s never understood, nods across to the nearest shop. There’s a blanket printed with Bob Marley hanging in the window, a length of twinkling Christmas lights strung above it- “Wanna see if there’s any cool stuff?” 

Together, they browse through buckets of pins and sew-on patches. Elbow-to-elbow, inhaling the subtle wet scent of one another. Memories of rained-on school lunch breaks woven between them; stinging cold air, grey clouds and the hollow smack of a kicked football aimed at Zayn, Danny squaring up and causing trouble afterwards. He knocks his hip to Zayn’s, for the familiarity, and Zayn knocks back- light as bird bones. Danny knows that he would square up still, with hard muscle packed beneath his shirt now. He would brush his knuckles to Zayn’s tears again and pretend as though he’d never really seen him cry. 

The last of rain splattered over Zayn’s cheeks looks like tears and it steals Danny, until the other boy breaks him from his gloom with the glittering curve of a grin, having spotted a rack of ornate rings. _Magpie_. 

“Ah, those are amazin’,” He coos, and Danny finds himself plucking three from their velveteen cushion: a fat skull, something that resembles an onyx and a burnished band.  

With an inexplicable lump in his throat, he cradles one of Zayn’s hands in his palm and pushes each of the rings over a skinny finger, six knuckles; settles them properly with his heart beating in short bursts and his lashes low. When he glances back up to Zayn’s face, he has his eyebrows furrowed- 

“Like a pirate innit, yeah? I’ll buy ‘em for you.”  

“Nah mate, like you don’t have to do that-” Zayn begins, thinking of the pizza and the hotel room and his first plane across the Atlanic, but Danny cuts him short- 

“I wanna, mate, yeah? Just so long as you send some of those scantily clad mermaids and wenches my way.” 

Zayn grazes his teeth to his bottom lip- a shy little boy- “I’ll put a good word in with Anamaria if I make it to Tortuga.” He promises, “Thank you.”  

Treasures paid for, they pause for a smoke outside of the bazaar. Tucked back beneath an overhanging ledge, with their cigarette cherries glowing like the stop lights, they discover that even when the rain sounds like thunder, New York’s crowds don’t disperse. There are countless rushing knots of dripping people and bobbing black umbrellas, and so wordlessly, Danny hooks his fingers around Zayn’s waist to keep him from panicking, knowing that he never quite found a coping mechanism for pressing masses of strangers. His sweet awkward boy, who has somehow become a super model and a poet since they touched down on American tarmac.  

When their cigarettes are down to mottled golden nubs, they hop into a cab that’s alive with a roaring Beatles compilation- the driver playing his wide fingers against the wheel and smiling from ear-to-ear. Zayn smiles too, secret and slow as he folds into his seat. With his cheek tipped to the mist of the window, he let’s Danny bark out the name of their hotel so that he can sing along. He goes about it as quietly as a sliding raindrop, but Danny hears. That saccharine voice that got Zayn parts in school plays and sixties lyrics about hand holding [when they really mean sex]. He grazes his own hand against the seat until his fingertips hit Zayn’s thigh, both eyebrows up towards his hair line; face far too honest about how fond he is- 

“You know the words to the Beatles now?” He asks- recognizing _something_ in the current chorus, as almost anybody would. 

Zayn closes his eyes briefly and let’s his thigh push back in against the fingertips, “Broadenin’ me horizons, yeah?” He blushes, and stops singing at all.  

Danny _aches_ for the rest of the journey, wanting terribly to hear Zayn’s little voice beneath Lennon and McCartney’s. Instead, he settles for the heat pooled beneath the denim of Zayn’s jeans creeping through him as he steadfastly watches the rich neon bleeding through the slick landscape outside. He settles for knowing that Zayn is such a prominent character in his story, pivotal to all of the major plot points. He settles for Zayn sneakily overlapping his fingers with his, like a kid who doesn’t know what to do about a crush he should’t have. 

A little later, when the pair of them are sat cross-legged on their hotel bed [midway through a clumsy attempt at Gin Rummy with a pack of complimentary playing cards] Zayn glances up from his hand, his soul too obvious in his brown eyes, and says quite softly- “Hey, you know John and Paul, yeah? From The Beatles, I mean. They used to share beds, too. When they went away to Wales and that or like I don’t know... if they crashed at each other’s? I don’t even know what I’m on about. Just. They did. Yeah.”  

Blinking and faltering, Zayn twitches his sock-clad toes to the Danny’s knee and Danny feels the cliche of a flame-lick against his nerves; an insect scuttling from the nape of his neck to his spine that makes him jump up from the bed. 

“Erm, shall I go grab us some drinks or whatever? Like some beers or wine? I saw a store just up the road, or block as they say here- when in Rome, like.” He finds himself asking, rambling and patting his pocket for his Marlboros before he shrugs on his damp leather, “You like red wine, right? And m&ms, peanut butter?” 

Zayn doesn’t get a chance to tell Danny that there’s no need, that it’s still teeming, before he’s gone. A blur through the doorway and a ghostly silence in his place. Zayn frowns at his friend’s abandoned spot on their bed and then drags himself across to the window. Sits himself up on the sill to watch for him. The rain is thrashing, roaring, and it’s far darker than it had been. The air an almost opaque grey, as though the heavy clouds had sunk low enough to skim over the tallest buildings. The city is beautiful with it, though. An illustration beneath tissue paper to keep the inks clean. Jewels, in turn, scattered over the tissue. Rubies and citrine that Zayn kisses to feel how cool the glass is.  

Distracted by spires and the mosaics of blinking office windows, he doesn’t catch Danny returning, stopping outside of the hotel for another fix of nicotine. His shoulders hunched and clothes sopping, hand shivering as it shields his lighter from the weather. Stories below their heated hotel room, the older boy feels as though he’s freezing from the inside out, organs coated with a frost, but he fights through it for the smoke. More thoughts in his head than raindrops in the sky, he contemplates drowning himself in one of the deeper puddles and then rolls his eyes because he is not _tha_ t guy. He can’t go to pieces over Zayn growing up. Up and up like a weed.  

He can’t help but picture the little boy Zayn had been once though, with thumb holes bitten into his scratchy school jumper, nervous eyes when they back-and-forth’d through improvs and scripts. The kid who’d coughed his way through his first loosely rolled spliff. Danny had always wanted to be showing Zayn things when they were younger- his little brother first, then his CD collection, how to punch in boxing gloves. Now the world. New York. And he wants Zayn to show him things, too.  

He has to light up again before he forces himself back up to their room. Let the smoke and tar of it bind his bones together, because he can’t fall apart when he’s got his boy to take care of in such a big city. 

Once he does return to Zayn, the two Yorkshire boys take turns pouring the cheap merlot into white mugs. Hug the mugs with both hands; heavy eyes towards heavy eyes, dipping lids and matted lashes. Sipping and saying nothing. The taste of the wine is cloying over their tongues but neither of them know enough about good grapes to care. It slips down easily and they drink to get drunk and dull the sting of New York having torn their skin from them. Left them a little raw.  

“ _New York_ , D. We’re sharin’ wine in a hotel room in bloody _New York_. Wow.” Zayn shakes his head as he watches his second cupful of wines slosh from the bottle, “And mate, you’re all wet, shouldn’t you change?”   

Danny thinks that he probably should, hears his Mum’s worrying about the catching of colds across the ocean, so he shrugs. Nods. Gives Zayn shoulder a squeeze- “You too, Zayn, yeah? Wanna borrow a hoodie, baby bro?”  

Zayn’s scowls in protest- “Hey, Ant’s the baby! This was my twentieth birthday present, remember?” But then the hoodie Danny tosses towards him swallows him whole [too big even on the older boy], smelling of soap powder and Marlboro Reds, and he’s home. Safe and dry. Tucked up in the grey marl folds of it, sleeves over his fingers around the mug, hem of it towards his knees.  

Danny should want to kiss him less when he’s all the more familiar, but with the red of the wine in the blue of veins the want for it burns on; the berry-stain of the other’s lips rather less than helpful.  

“ _New York_ ,” He sighs wearily, padding over to the window and knocking the drapes aside to gaze at the insistent rain, “It’s a bit of a bastard, yeah? Those _hours_ flyin’ out here, for what? Good old British rain. Maybe I should of booked somewhere more exotic- Jamaica next time? Some Mediterranean Island?”  

“Jamaica’d be cool,” Zayn agrees, “And the food would be fit in the Mediterranean, but I don’t mind it here, you know. It’s been good. It’s been nice.” He appears behind Danny, close enough for the other to sense the rise and fall of his chest, and touches his chin to his shoulder. “The rain’s different here. It’s alive. Soaks you through and gets excited about it. Rain back ‘ome’s always just tired. Too lazy, so you only really realise you’ve been caught in it when your socks squelch and your hair sticks. I hate that.”  

Danny can’t keep himself from smiling as Zayn speaks and from relishing in the dig of his new rings against his hip when Zayn wraps an arm around him for a hug. He rocks back on his heels and lifts a hand to skate a finger over the condensation on the window pane. He sketches out a _D_ and a _Z_ and a heart and then rubs the same finger over the joint of Zayn’s wrist.  

“Sort of weather where your thoughts run away though, isn’t it? Something about the clouds opening up... Been half with you all day, half somewhere strange. All nostalgic and unarmed and shit.”  

“Been scarin’ yourself?” Zayn asks knowingly, and it’s the hundredth reminder of the day that he’s grown now. 

“Been scarin’ myself, aye. But you’ve been scaring me too kid- when the fuck did you quit being a teenager, eh? Why did nobody warn me this would happen?” 

Zayn laughs and it reverberates through them both- “Snuck up, didn’t it? Been in uni two years, in fucking America right now- _flew out of the country, man_ \- but back home, still can’t bring meself to make a phone call to the doctor’s surgery.” 

“Yeah? Still gonna ask me to do that for you?” Danny asks, voice hitching in hope, shoulders relaxing when Zayn nods against him. “Good. Wanna break into the m&ms then?”  

They sit side by side up against the plush headboard to knock back the candies like pills. Handfuls swilled down with the sour merlot as though they’re well practiced, but they’ve not done pills much, really. Just once in fact. A night of bright face paint dotted beneath their eyes and Zayn winding around Danny like a cat. Laughing and knotting the older boy in his spidery hands. Danny remembers the static electricity of Zayn’s high- how it’d sparked sharp against his own gooseflesh- and the gut-twist of his come down, his crash into a panic attack so deep he couldn’t hold his water steady or see straight. 

How Zayn hadn’t been able to find him when he’d had only been an inch ahead, lit up orange from a streetlamp, and how he’d repeated his name like a mantra as he’d waited for Danny to find him, instead.  

“Don’t stop needing me, Zayn,” He whispers quite suddenly, surprised by his own voice sounding out starkly above the rain’s drumming, “Don’t steer your ship too far from me, you listenin’? I probably sound like a drunken dickhead right now, but I think my ‘eart means it, so listen, pirate. My little brother, getting all pretty and fuckin’ like, alluringly mysterious to anyone but me. Let me keep an eye on you even when you don’t really need it.” 

Zayn draws his lip past his teeth and scrapes at a wine stain at the rim of his mug. Gives it a second before he whispers back, “I wont, D. Couldn’t if I tried...” And then- “Hey, remember when I went through that phase of nightmares, and you used to be the big spoon or whatever it is girls call it? Stay at mine? Even kept it a secret from Ant for me?” 

Danny blinks- taken aback and overwhelmed by Zayn’s memory- “Yeah?” 

“Yeah, Well I. I don’t really have the nightmares no more and like, rain is white noise, right? So that’ll probably put us to sleep... But you think we could like, cuddle anyway?” 

Drained bottle of wine and empty packet of m&ms dumped on the bedside table, the boys curl up like lovers familiar with the flexing of one another’s limbs. A hand splaying against a belly and feet tucked about each other; cold toes rucking up sweat pants to press at calf muscles. Entirely comfortable with each stealing other’s body heat. Danny twists Zayn’s rings from his fingers [pops them into the pocket of his own hoodie] and nudges his nose to the younger boy’s neck, in lieu of the kiss he’s not sure he’s allowed to give. Zayn murmurs, sets himself back against Danny’s chest and thighs.  

Outside, the rain is as relentless as it had been hours ago but the echo of it is softer with one ear to a pillow and no artificial lights. Even with the closed-eye-tilt of intoxication, the unsettling buzz of the cheap merlot beneath their skulls. Everything caves close and they both feel like children hidden beneath a bed sheet tent.  

“Dream big, kid,” Danny says, slurring a little but honest with it, “Pirate tonight, tourist tomorrow.”  

In the morning, Danny wakes first- with his phone informing him that it’s midday and Zayn snoring gently at his side. His little brother looking like a polaroid. He lays still for a minute, admiring the sepia of Zayn’s skin and the birds nest remains of his pompadour, and then cracks his back as he clambers from the bed, pads across to the window. With his nose between the pulled curtains, he squints against the city’s bright wash of light, and through the ache of his hangover, two fingers to this temple, Danny sees Zayn gleaming with it. Sneaker-laces deep in Central Park puddles but poised like an editorial model. His rings splitting light rays into starbursts, his thick lashes catching raindrops.  

He imagines Zayn as a New York native: a stranger to him, curled around a black coffee and a notebook. A student hiding from a freak storm in a corner cafe, and knows that he’d fall in love with that person, too. He thinks back to the ledge outside of the vintage bazaar and it becomes Zayn with an accent asking for a match. The two of them tilting their hips towards one another and blowing smoke through curious smirks. Then there’s _his_ Zayn; one bare foot peeking out from beneath the comforter, twitching in his sleep. As familiar as the lines threaded across his own palm; his heart straining inside of his ribs. 

When Zayn eventually awakes, ruddy cheeked and dark eyed, it’s to an already damp Danny sat at the foot of their bed. A paper bag of food in his lap that smells of the Malik family kitchen and a proud smile curling over his lips as he begins unpacking foil tubs-  
  
“Afternoon sleepyhead, I got lunch! Yours is the chicken jalfrezi and mushroom pakora, yeah? Bought us a map too, and an umbrella, since we’re being tourists. Eat up kiddo, we’re going to have adventures which culminate in us being awfully underwhelmed by the Statue of Liberty!”  

It’s at the Statue of Liberty that they finally kiss. Seeking out a port in a storm; shivering violently and ducking towards one another.  

A gust of particularly intense wind flips their umbrella inside out, their waterlogged map crumples in Danny’s hands and whilst Danny laughs, delighting in the disaster, Zayn almost sobs. Each blast of wind biting, his hands are numb and he lets the skeleton of the umbrella go and clings to Danny instead. _Danny_ who is somehow pulsing heat when their bellies brush and reflecting the entirety of New York city in big glassy eyes. 

“I can’t feel my fingers,” Zayn whines and then both of Danny’s hands are around his [smeared map lost to a puddle beside their toes]. Urging the blood through his veins, easing out the icy cricks in his delicate bones.  

“You look beautiful, mate, I promise you, you look beautiful,” Danny says, because it needs to be said. 

Zayn’s face is rain streaked and chafed; his black hair is plastered over his forehead and his skin itching beneath the sodden fabric of his clothes and Danny can’t help but see him as a medium format film photograph. Each grain fleck glorious enough to have New York skid to a halt, he wonders why everyones peering up at the Statue Of Liberty when Zayn is stood just there. As perfect as he’s ever been, something about being ruined emphasizing it. Barely twenty years old, prone to bouts of crippling anxiety and breathing in slowly through his nose, _just abou_ t believing his best friend.  

Danny lifts his hand to flatten his palm to the line of Zayn’s jaw, tilting his head towards the sky- “New York looks good on you, I’ve been meaning to say.” He murmurs, his own breathing paced like he’s run the length of the East Coast. 

Zayn swallows, choking thick and scared, before he whispers- “D, my lips- my lips are numb too.”  

Danny nods, aware that he’s stopped breathing at all, and has his thumb brush across them first. Until Zayn’s lips pucker against the pad of it and he knows. Understands what his favourite boy is asking for. He scoops Zayn up, feels him lifting up onto the toes of his sneakers, and chases over the press of his thumb with his mouth. Open mouthed and feeling far easier than they’d expected, for their first, they kiss so that their lips thaw. Taste hot honeyed tea and refuse to pause to wonder about what it means.  

If it means anything more than being in America rather than Yorkshire. If they’ll want to kiss more even when they’re home, when they’re just kids and not secret film stars. For now, they have their very own rain cloud and they indulge themselves until they bruise. Temporary half moon scars from eager nails and Zayn’s twig-thin thigh rocking between Danny’s.  

And then, when they stop, so does the rain. They break their kiss, nuzzle their noses instead, and a weak and unexpected sun cracks through the gloom as if to illuminate their hurried _love you_ s; Danny’s _shit, if they’re not ruined do you want a smoke?_ and Zayn’s tilting spine and _aye cap’n_. 


End file.
